BG Medicine Participates as a Member of the “21st Century FDA Task Force”.03/07/2005Waltham, Mass. – March 7, 2005 – BG Medicine, an emerging drug development company, announced today its’ participation as a member of the 21st Century FDA Task Force. The task force, formed by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, is chaired by Robert Goldberg, PhD, Director of the Institute’s Center for Medical Progress. The Task Force charter originates from the FDA’s publication, “Innovation or Stagnation: Challenge and Opportunity in the Critical Path to New Medical Products”, published in March 2004. The FDA Report summary states, “A new product development toolkit – containing powerful new scientific and technical methods…is urgently needed to improve predictability and efficiency along the critical path from laboratory concept to commercial product.” “BG Medicine is excited to be a member of 21st Century Task Force and contribute to approaches to provide better outcomes for patients in a more timely and cost efficient manner with higher specificity and quality,” said Pieter Muntendam, MD, President of BG Medicine. “Science enabled pharmaceutical drug development is a core component of the FDA’s recommendations and a foundation element of BG Medicine’s System Pharmacology approach to critical path questions in the pharmaceutical development pipeline. We can rapidly measure, integrate and interpret information from gene transcripts, proteins and metabolites. This provides insight into the black box of molecular effects. On the basis of our successful application of this approach with several partners we are convinced that the production ready platform developed by BG Medicine will contribute to the objectives of the 21st Century Task Force.” “Central to the Task Force efforts,” according to the Chairman, Robert Goldberg, “is the development and application of molecular tools that allow companies and physicians to develop the right drug for the right patient at the right time. BG Medicine is one of the few companies seeking to personalize medicine based on novel life-science technologies by transforming the drug development process. BG Medicine is working to establish new benchmarks for evaluating how well medicines work, as well as benchmarks that will improve clinical practice and inform future drug development.” About BG Medicine BG Medicine is pioneering the commercial application of Systems Pharmacology, which is based on scientific advances in the Systems Biology field. Its advanced proprietary platform enables novel paths to new medicines through molecular fingerprinting of transcript, proteomic and metabolomic data combined with powerful bioinformatics integration to produce Systems Response Profiles TM. These profiles, which combine information from multiple physiological compartments and often include thousands of distinct analyte levels, have enabled unprecedented molecular characterization of disease states and drug responses. BG Medicine applies its novel approach through collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies. Founded in 2000 and located in Waltham, Mass., BG Medicine is backed by Flagship Ventures and Gilde Investment Management. For more information see www.bg-medicine.com. About Manhattan Institute The Manhattan Institute is a think tank whose mission is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility. To learn more about the Manhattan Institute, please visit, www.manhattan-institute.org. |